Cloudy Water Once A Month?

[wesley]

Hey all

As the topic suggests, i am at my wits end.

I have a 125ltr tank, its been set up since december 12th. I set the tank up as instructed by several local stores and close friends which have had fish for years. so im positive ive set it up correctly.

Thers is currently 1 plec, 2 angels, 2 mollies, 2 rams and a danio in the tank.

My problem is at least one a month the water will just go cloudy and last from anything from 5 days to 2-3 weeks, when looking into the tank it looks white but when doing a water change and empting the water out there is a greenish colour to it, ive bought a master water testing kit and test it quite frequent. All results are perfect but the PH is quite high (i think)at 8.

Ive visited several local stores and asked for advise and they keep telling me i have 'bacteria bloom' and to carry out several partial water changes over a few days and keep the light off. After doing this for a week the water is no clearer (if not worse) and the plants have started discolouring.
I then visited a highly recomended store and they sold me a product called 'B clear' by nutrafin.
After reading and using the product i should have a seen results in 12-24 hours, im now on my 4th day with no result.

If anyone has had anything like this or has any info on what i can do, please let me know as i realy dont know what to do next.

Thanks again, Wesley

 

[Colin_T]

Generally milky cloudy water is a bacterial bloom. Whereas green water is an algal bloom.
Bacterial blooms are usually caused by too much food going into the tank and not enough filtration to break it down. It will also be caused by uneaten food rotting in the tank.
How do you clean the filter? If you wash the filter materials under tap water you could be killing off the good bacteria and causing the bacterial bloom.
You might have an algal bloom and it is taking off after the water change. The easiest way to control it is by reducing light and if necessary, adding some algicide. But algae killers will affect other live plants so care must be taken when using them in a planted tank.

 

[wesley]

hey
im cleaning the filter media in the old water ive taken out of the tank.
once ive changed the water the water looks so much clearer for about an hour but as soon as i look again its back to its normal cloudiness.

As to feeding im feeding with flakes every 3 days and plec tablets every other day.

when changing the water is there a limit on how much i can change at any one time? as im thinking if its gets better when i change only part of the water, would it be ok to change 75% of the water to try cancel out any bloom of sort?

 

[Colin_T]

you can change as much water as you like as long as the new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine, and has a similar temperature and pH to the tank water.
I used to do 75-80% water changes each week on some of my tanks. I had a water holding container and filled it with tap water. I left it to aerate for a day and had a heater in it. When it was ready I used that for water changes.